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WILLIAIVI LLOYO GARHIbUN. 
Acl. 7i. 

From Ike hint by A nne Whitney, 1S7S. 



TRIBUTES 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, 



FUNERAL SERVICES, 



MAY 28, 1879. 



BOSTON: 

HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

C|)e Eibcrsttic Press, Cambriiffc. 

1879. 






The Riverside Press, Cambrit/ge. 
Printed by II. Houghton and Company. 



<ip(j^ 



The announcement of the critical illness of Mr. Garrison, 
speedily followed by that of his death while absent from 
home, took his friends and the public on both sides of the 
Atlantic by surprise ; for though it was known that he had 
long been infirm in health, the vigor of his recent contribu- 
tions to the public press (the latest of which, in denuncia- 
tion of the Anti-Chinese Bill, and on the exodus of the 
freedmen from Mississippi and Louisiana to Kansas, had ap- 
peared within a few weeks) had made it difficult to believe 
that his health was at all precarious. Only his family and 
immediate friends knew that those letters were written 
while he was suffering such pain and discomfort that the 
feeling that he must lift up his voice, and bear his testi- 
mony once more on the question of human rights, alone 
enabled him to accomplish the task. The exhaustion and 
prostration which followed these efforts made it evident to 
himself that his forces were nearly spent, and gave his fam- 
ily much concern. 

Even from Mr. Garrison's seventy-third birthday (Decem- 
ber 10, 1878), his private letters were marked by forebod- 
ings of his approaching end, which he w^elcomed as a- relief 
from his physical infirmities. In the following April, 1879, 
the feeling which he described as a giving way of the in- 
ternal organism became so strong, and his malady (a chronic 



affection of the kidneys) so intolerable, that, at the solicita- 
tion of his daughter, he went to New York to put himself 
under the care of her family physician. He arrived at the 
Westmoreland Apartment House, where she resided, on 
Monday afternoon, April 28th. On Wednesday the treat- 
ment began, with immediate promise of good results, which 
was, however, of necessity soon disappointed. On Satur- 
day, May 10th, Mr. Garrison took to his bed, but even then 
those about him did not fairly realize the gravity of his 
condition. At the end of another week, however, the symp- 
toms became unmistakably alarming, and on Tuesday, May 
20th, the members of the family in Boston were summoned 
by telegraph and arrived the next day. The final changes 
proceeded slowly, and the death-struggle did not set in till 
half-past ten o'clock on the evening of Friday. Up to that 
time Mr. Garrison, though disinclined to talk unless spoken 
to, or to indicate his wants, retained all his faculties, and 
recognized his children and grandchildren by voice and by 
sight ; and only an hour or two before he lost this conscious- 
ness, he listened with manifest pleasure to the singing of his 
favorite hymns, to which, as he lay outstretched, he beat 
time both with his hands and feet. He expired peacefully 
at a few minutes past eleven o'clock on the succeeding night, 
Saturday, May 24th. His illness had been in many respects 
a distressing one, even in comparison with the wretched 
months that preceded it; but the prevailing sense was of 
weariness — frequently expressed in a desire to "go home " 
— rather than of acute bodily pain, though that was not 



wanting. His vitality was reniarkabl}'^ illustrated through- 
out. 

A post-mortem examination having been made on Mon- 
day, Mr. Garrison's remains were removed the same night 
to Roxbury, Mass. On Wednesday afternoon, May 28th, 
the funeral services were held in the neighboring church of 
the First Religious Society, which the Trustees had kindly 
placed at the disposal of the family and the public. At 
sunset the body was interred beside that of Mrs. Garrison 
in the cemetery at Forest Hills. 



fDilliam Hlopti c^acri^oit. 



Born in Newburypokt, Mass., December 10, 1805. 
Died in New York City, May 2-1, 1879. 



FUI^EEAL 



WILLIAJNI LLOYD GARRISON. 



EXERCISES AT THE CHURCH. 

The large assemblage which filled the spacious church 
of the First Religious Society in Roxbury, on the occasion 
of Mr. Garrison's funeral, was remarkable for the number 
of his surviving friends and co-laborers in the Anti-Slavery 
and kindred reformatory movements which it embraced ; 
and besides these there were present many of the race to 
whose redemption from bondage he had consecrated his 
best years, and not a few who were formerly indifferent or 
hostile to the cause which he advocated, but who now de- 
sired to pay their tribute of respect and admiration to his 
memory. In accordance with Mr. Garrison's views of death, 
everything was done to avoid the appearance of mourning 
or gloom. The blinds were opened to admit the cheerful 
light of the perfect spring day; the pulpit was tastefully 
decorated with flowers ; and the hymns of cheer and inspi- 
ration of which he had been so fond were sung. The whole 
audience rose when, a few minutes after two o'clock, the 
body was borne into the church, attended by the pall- 
bearers and followed by the family. The pall-bearers were 



8 FUNERAL OF WILLTAM LLOYD GARRLSON. 

Wendell Phillips, Samuel May, Samuel E. Sewall, Robert 
F. Wallcut, Theodore D. Weld, Oliver Johnson, Lewis 
Hayden, and Charles L. Mitchell. 

Rev. Samuel May opened the exercises by repeating the 
Lord's Prayer, and reading the following selections from 
the Old and New Testaments, some of which had been fa- 
vorite quotations with Mr. Garrison, and often read by him 
at Anti-Slavery meetings. 

" Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " 

" The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God." 
" He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." 

" The Mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the 
earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. 

" Hear, O my peoj^le, and I will speak ; O Israel, and I will tes- 
tify against thee. 

" What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou 
shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth ? Seeing thou hatest 
instruction, and castest my words behind thee. 

" When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and 
hast been partaker with adulterers. 

" Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your 
fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth : and the cries of 
them who have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of 
Sabaoth." 

" I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery for burnt offering." 

"What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the 
faces of the poor ? saith the Lord God of hosts." 

"Bring no more vain oblations: incense is an abomination unto 
me ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. 

"And when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes 



OPENING EXERCISES. 9 

from you ; yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear : 
your hands are full of blood." 

" Wherefore hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that 
rule this people. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant 
with death, and with hell are we at agreement ; when the overflow- 
ing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us. 

" Therefore, thus saith the Lord : Judgment will I lay to the 
line, and righteousness to the plummet ; and the hail shall sweep 
away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding- 
place. 

" And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your 
agreement with hell shall not stand ; when the overflowing scourge 
shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it." 

" Cry aloud, spare not ; lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and 
show my people their transgression." 

"None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust 
in vanity and speak lies : . . . . 

" Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent 
blood ; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity : . . . . 

" The way of peace they know not ; they have made them 
crooked paths 

" Judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar 
off: truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. 

" Yea, truth faileth ; and he that departeth from evil maketh 
himself a prey." 

"So thou, O Son of Man, I have set thee a watchman unto the 
house of Israel ; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth 
and warn them from me. 

" When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely 
die ; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that 
wicked man shall die in his iniquity ; but his blood will I require 
at thine hand. 



10 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

« Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way, to turn from 
it ; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity ; but 
thou hast delivered thy soul." 

" The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because He hath sent 
me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap- 
tives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." 

"Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. 
Cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek justice ; relieve the op- 
pressed ; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow." 

Theu, 

" Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; 
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." 

« When the ear heard me, then it blessed me ; and when the eye 
saw me, it gave witness to me ; 

« Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the flitherless, and 
him that had none to help him. 

"The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me." 

" I know that my Vindicator liveth, and will stand up at length 
on the earth ; and in my flesh shall I see God. 
"Yea, I shall see Him my friend." 

"The righteous live forevermore ; their reward also is with the 
Lord ; and the care of them is with the Most High. 

" Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom For 

with His right hand shall He cover them ; and with His arm shall 
He protect them." 

And Jesus said : — 

" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my 
brethren, yk havk doxk it unto me." 

" Him that overcometli will T make a pillar in the temple of my 
God And 1 will write upon liim my new name." 



REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL MAY. 11 



REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL MAY. 

" Mr. Garrison is dead " are words which have gone from 
mouth to mouth of many thousands, on both sides the 
ocean, during the hist few days, and the fact will long con- 
tinue to be a theme in many circles for sorrowful and yet 
joyful discourse, for pain mingled with deepest gi'atitude to 
the Divine Providence whose hand had so often been put 
forth for his deliverance, and brought him at last to a good 
old age, crowning his life with loving kindness and tender 
mercies ; surrounding him, at home and abroad, witli 
" honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." 

Thanksgiving and praise, from all our hearts, unto God, 
for all his goodness and favor to this his servant. 

It is pleasant now to know that that name which, within 
the memory of most of us, was everywhere cast out as evil, 
loaded with bitter reproach, spoken with fear and hate, and 
regarded as synonymous with all that was dangerous and 
destructive, is now, may I not almost say, everywhere hon- 
ored ; is now well-nigh universally regarded with enthusi- 
astic admiration. 

A great life has closed, — has closed its earthly stage 
and scenes, — and passed beyond our mortal sight. But 
never before was that life more potent for good than at this 
moment ; never before did he live, as he lives now : lives in 
the laws of the land, lives in a renovated Constitution, lives 
in the hearts of all true lovers of our country and of man- 
kind, lives in the labors of those who are seeking to purge 
our land from the curse of Intemperance and i*escue the 
legions who are now in slavery to intoxicating drink, lives 
in all the aspirations and hopes of those who seek the full 



12 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

recognition of Woman as man's equal in right and citizen- 
ship. 

For death does not narrow the influence of such a life, 
but enlarges it ; it gives the last needful pressure to the 
weight which stamps its image ineffaceably in history and 
upon humanity. 

His friends do not gather around his lifeless body to-day 
to utter mere eulogies. Most of all they come to shower 
their blessings upon his name ; to rejoice together for him ; 
to thank God for his simple, strong, pure, true life, and for 
the grand work he has done, — done so steadfastly, so per- 
sistently, so fearlessly, done so well. 

What a task was before him when he, then little more 
than a boy, first stood with American Slavery face to face ! 
Three millions of slaves in the land, so grown from less than 
half a million under the fostering wings of the American 
Republic ; a compact body of slaveholders, acting as with 
one will, and commanding the allegiance of state, of church, 
and of all political parties ; a Constitution, which, as Daniel 
Webster affirmed of it, " recognized slavery and gave it 
solemn guarantees," while all the lesser political lights, and 
seemingly all the people, said Amen; — all these, and what- 
ever else can be described or imagined of intellectual, com- 
mercial, social, individual force, were arrayed against the 
rash man who should speak against Slavery. What could 
one young man do? — a stripling David, without weapons, 
unless the tritth and the 7-ir/ht might be called weapons, and 
comparatively few then thought they woukl help him much. 

'•'• But I could not turn a deaf ear to the cries of the 
slaves," he said ; " nor throw off the obligations which 
my Creator had fastened upon me. Yet I ti'en\bled, and 
exclaimed in the lan2ua<re of Jeremiah, ' Ah, Lord God ! 
behold I cannot speak ; for I am a child.' " 



REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL MAY. 13 

Then he reflected whose was the might, whose was the 
power, by which such work is done ; and that in such a 
contest, " one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten tliou- 
sand to flight." 

Then came the determination, the solemn, high resolve 
to do and to give all he was and could. Then were spoken 
those words which, in themselves, are his immortal monu- 
ment : " I am in earnest. I will not equivocate — I will 
not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — and Iivill he. 
heard.^'' 

Oh ! see his faith ; see his absolute trust in Eternal 
Truth. 

And now the whole life of this true-souled man rises 
clear, majestic, serene, in beautiful proportions, before our 
riveted, our fascinated gaze ! How the theme tempts me 
on ! But I must forbear, and let others here guide your 
thoughts, cheer your aching hearts, and lift your eyes up- 
ward and onward. 

Should I speak at all of his personal character, it would 
be of those traits in which the world, who knew him least, 
has least believed. He was the very soul of good-will and 
helpfulness to every one who needed his helping hand, and 
was never too busy to give it. I must not speak much of 
his tender care and thoughtfulness for his wife and children ; 
nor of the full blessing which thej^ have borne back into 
his bosom. In the long illness of her who was struck down 
suddenly at his side, her efficient help at once withdrawn 
and henceforth to depend wholly on others, how did he 
give days and nights, and weeks and years, to be her solace, 
nurse, and comforter ; and always cheerful, for her sake. 
May I, without suspicion of being biased by relationship, 
say here that the late Samuel J. May loved him for forty 



14 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

years, and to his latest eavtlily moment, with a brother's 
warmest love, which never cooled or changed, and claim the 
fact as good evidence for them both ? 

Who shall rightly set forth his life's work ? 

Here, to-day, I can only say that he was, in the highest 
sense, the faithful servant of God; and join my thanks- 
giving with 3'ours for all he was : — 

That he hearkened to the divine voice in his sonl ; 

That he allowed no favor to blind, no fear to deter him ; 

That he spoke without reserve the truth as he saw it, 
and with the plainest utterance he could give it ; 

That his words became as those of a prophet in their 
piercing power ; 

That he walked amidst perils and deadly enemies un- 
harmed, and that he saw his Avork fully vindicated in the 
sight of man ; that, in the flesh, he saw God's law triumph- 
ant, saw the abolition of slavery, saw nearly four millions 
of slaves in his native land made freemen, and saw the gen- 
eral concurrence of all the nation's true and good in the 
needful amendment of the nation's organic law. 

Dear friend, brave, true, good man, farewell ! Lion-hearted 
when any wrong was to be rebuked and resisted, but the 
soul of patience, forbearance, and tenderness when sorrow- 
ing, suffering, or struggling hearts needed cheer and coun- 
sel, — farewell for now ! 

Yet while we speak our farewells we seem nearer to thee, 
surer of thee, than ever, and know that every motion of 
thy enlarged spirit beats — and will forever beat — in be- 
half of freedom and truth, for peace on earth and gootl-will 
among men. 

" Servant of God, wl-U done ! Well hast thou fought 
The better iiyht, wlio s^iiwle hast maintained 



REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL MAY. 15 

Against revolted multitudes the cause 

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms ; 

And for the testimony of truth hast borne 

Universal reproach, far worse to bear 

Than violence : for this was all thy care, 

To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 

Judged thee perverse." 

A quartette of colored friends, composed of Mrs. Nellie 
B. Mitchell, soprano. Miss Fannie A. Washington, contralto, 
Mr. William Walker, tenor, Mr. Lewis A. Fisher, basso, 
then sang the following hymn to Handel's " Christmas : " — 

" Awake, my soul ! stretch every nerve, 
And press with vigor on : 
A heavenly race demands thy zeal, 
And an immortal crown. 

" A cloud of witnesses around 
Hold thee in full survey : 
Forget the steps already trod, 
And onward urge thy way. 

" 'T is God's all-animating voice 
That calls thee from on high ; 
'T is his own hand presents the prize 
To thine aspiring eye, — 

" That prize, with peerless glories bright, 
Which shall new lustre boast 
When victors' wreaths and monarchs' gems 
Shall blend in common dust." 

Mr. May. — The hymn which has just been sung, as well 
as all the others that will be sung on this occasion, were 
especial favorites with Mr. Garrison from his youth up, 



16 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

often sung by him in his family and elsewhere, as so many 
here know, and they, with others, were the solace and com- 
fort of his sick-chamber, the last night of his consciousness. 

REMARKS OF MRS. LUCY STONE. 

This day brings us together to aid in the last rites which 
devolve on those who bury their dead. One looking from 
the outside might say, — 

" The sequel of to-day unsolders all 

The goodliest fellowship of famous knights 
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep 
They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we 
Shall nevermore at any future time 
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds. 

" But now the whole Round Table is dissolved." 

But the personal sorrow and sense of loss which the close 
of this illustrious life carries to a circle large on both sides 
of the ocean, almost pass out of sight in the presence of its 
long record of noblest living. Instinctively a shout of joy 
leaps to our lips, as we remember how loyally he stood at 
his post, three-score years and ten, and how straight his foot- 
steps always followed the clear line of duty. How in cir- 
cumstances of trial, such as rarely fell to mortal lot, his 
courage never faltered, and his faith never wavered. With 
a sublime trust that what is right has the Eternal Forces be- 
hind it, and must succeed, he bent every power, without a 
doubt, and without a fear, to uproot the greatest crime of 
the age, unmoved by mobs, or by threats, or by entreaties, 
and he lived to see the triumph of his life-work. In the 
thickest of the fight he had always a hand and a word for 
any other cause that he believed was true : peace, temper- 



REMARKS OF MRS. LUCY STONE. 17 

ance, woman's rights. For this last he stood a tower of 
strength to its small beginning. To its few solitary work- 
ers he said : " You have nothing to fear. No beginning 
was ever so small and feeble as that of Anti-Slavery. Be 
hold how the whole nation is stirred on account of it ! " 

And if ever there was an hour when those who were 
moving for the rights of woman needed counsel, we went 
to him. His knowledge of reform, his cordial interest in 
the movement itself, made him always our wise and cau- 
tious adviser, and to him, I think, the women of this coun- 
try, like the emancipated slaves, owe, perhaps, more than to 
any other man. You remember, when the World's Con- 
vention at London, in 1840, did not know that women were 
a part of the world, and would not receive Lucretia Mott, 
who was sent as one of the delegates from this country, Mr. 
Garrison went out with her and sat in the gallery. Nothing 
could induce him to place himself with those who did not 
recognize the equal rights of all, whether black or white, 
men or women. 

We ought to rejoice that he whose life has just closed 
has left to us an example grand like the hill-tops against 
a clear evening sky. It stands out to be a guide and direc- 
tion to all of us who come after him. I can think of no 
funeral in the history of the world where those left behind 
had so much reason to rejoice. When we look back over 
his life of more than three-score years and ten, and see it 
filled with beneficent work, — a work that leaves its mark 
on this age and on the ages to come, — it seems to me, in- 
stead of sorrowing we can rejoice that this example is left 
us. With the full possession of his powers, this friend has 
completed his work. We have all read his last letter about 
the exodus of the colored people from the South. We know 



18 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

it was written amidst paroxysms of pain which stopped his 
pen ; but it shows the vigor of his intellect and the strength 
of 4iis purpose were as great as ever. The battle for the 
freedom of the slaves is fought. To it Mr. Garrison de- 
voted all his best years. But his care for that race ceased 
only with his life. 

For one, in the name of woman, I would express the 
gratitude which we owe to this man whose hands are cold 
and still to-day. With what undaunted courage he met 
the issue, when tlie question of the rights of woman came 
into the great movement for which he lived and to which 
he devoted his best powers I He did not shirk it ; he did 
not dodge it ; he did not say, " It does not belong here." 
He saw that it was a question of human rights, and though 
it rent the Anti-Slavery Society in twain, and divided its 
forces for a time, he knew that the Eternal Force was on 
the side of right, and so he stood with it, and to his cour- 
ageous defense of it, the wonderful change which has come 
to the life of Avoman is largely due. In my heart of hearts 
I am grateful to him for the great work he did. The ven- 
eration of all who appreciate the meaning of the words, 
" Equal rights for woman," will be paid to his memory for- 
ever. 

Mr. May. — You will now hear from Samuel John- 
son. 

REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 

The silence of this presence, crowded with a love and 
reverence that have not waited the summons of the body's 
death, is too full of meaning to be interpreted in words. A 
voice which has been the unfailin<r safeijuard and succor of 



REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 19 

righteous purpose for half a century of a nation's struggle 
for political and moral existence, is forever stilled. When 
the inevitable event that brings anguish to the nearest and 
dearest companions plainly comes but to stamp upon the 
memory of mankind a stainless loyalty to liberty and jus- 
tice, as leading the way through all the agony of the people's 
second birth, what room is left for aught but exultant hom- 
age to the sweet securities of that providential order in 
which the life of humanity moves ! 

This must we emphasize beyond all else : that the move- 
ment of principles to universal good can incarnate itself in 
a personal life with such intensity of truth that the petti- 
ness of individualism is lost in the boundless significance of 
character. Nothing is so impressive in the closing of the 
great career on which we look to-day as the sublime war- 
rant of personality it brings to arrest the popular drift to 
mass- worship and organized mechanism, with their inevita- 
ble unbelief in intrinsic values. Its glory centres in hav- 
ing gathered up the moral laws in their whole dealing Avith 
this republic, to bear witness past dispute and beyond ignor- 
ing, that in their service one is greater than a multitude, the 
soul master of the state. In these great moments the heavi- 
est private loss is the noblest public education. 

It has long seemed clear to me, and I need not say how 
the conviction deepens in this presence to-day, that to share 
and represent the imperishableness of principles is the only 
possible assurance of immortality ; the only evidence it 
seems worth while to trust. Whoso is part of their path, 
motive and creative work, may well behold the future as 
the present, and recognize himself in the life that is to be. 
Remembering how he lived and moved and had his being in 
these eternities, what have we to do here with death save 



20 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

. the mrtino- of those outward ties, so dear and so famil- 
as the paitni^ ui ^^.^ ^.^^^^9 

';r.:i:rr:ra^r:i: ... ... .... 

,„,„ „„. lawless public f^^^^^^^Z^^J:^., 
insight, the v,g.lant heed the -^-^ ;,. „j ,„ 

::r„;ed ot those .ho '>-;;-■■«•::,: j™;;!'; 

X here is one whose eonscienee was a iana.a* to his 
country a„a his age; voice of the bette. soul ot,e™b. 
lie in its day of degeneracy, summoun.g .t to t''etos^^ 
.elf.efonnationaeen,eain,poss^h^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

. 1 !.;„ f^B« Here is a conscience that nevei, 

foreign or domestic oes. Here eonditions 

r™r\:rL: o^^^^^^^^^^^^^ -t integrity .vhich 
IrJl s'acrifices gain, and knew ^^^^^^^^ LV, 
l^c, of Dower, — a conscience whose untaltenng io„ i' 

iriell^ll heUl its -t against such fid.ac.es a^^^^^ 



LEMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 21 

all organized powers corrupt and blind, to reach and sum- 
mon a living truth which was its one direct opposite and 
only cure, — a conscience great enough to comprehend by 
instinct the identity of that truth with all others that go to 
make up the dignity of man, to strike the one saving track 
which included all others, intellectual and spiritual, made 
possible by the matchless opportunities of the age and the 
land, and to gather around the movement for which it stood 
the noblest brotherhood of heart and purpose, in the guard- 
ianship of a great constructive idea ; one of those rally- 
ing-points for culture, for patriotism, for public vii'tue, 
without whose continued inspiration the soul of a nation 
perishes from the earth. 

Above all, here was a conscience greatest in this, that it 
took its rise in love ; so that in the crowning unity and even 
identity of these two, his love nourishing his conscience and 
his conscience illuminating his love, neither could stray from 
the other, in the central current of his universal work, be- 
set though it was by surface eddies and strifes inseparable 
from the stress of a revolution ; teeming with possible dif- 
ferences of judgment and conflicts of duty that no man 
could control and no man fully comprehend. Pity for the 
suffering and justice to human nature; the oppressed to be 
succored and the moral order to be obeyed to the last tittle ; 
the soul of the poor to be delivered from the jaws of the 
spoiler, and the logic of retribution to be enforced that 
makes men and nations reap as they have sown, — these two 
sides were with him identical in substance and in force. 
Their union was the burden of his prophecy, and kept it 
matched with the broadening interests and demands of the 
struggle. From the moment when, almost single-handed, 
he brought the victim of a blind greed and a blinder piety 



22 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

face to face with his oppressoi-, amidst the fury of mobs and 
the contempt of their educators, — and ever since blood 
and fire, purging every institution and trying every soul, 
have come to the rescue of duties his little band of heroic 
men and "women had pleaded for in vain, — that divine 
identity of justice and mercy which he made his own has 
gone on, step by step, to prove itself the master of the age. 
And its latest admonition is as impressive as was the first. 
Tiiat toil-spent frame, borne downward to its rest, while 
the spirit bated not a jot of vision or of love, admonishes 
us to heed the warning he roused himself from pain and 
W'Cakness to lift in the hearing of the people, — not to ig- 
nore alike their past experience and their present condi- 
tion in the vanity of trusting only that which they desire 
to believe. 

How vast the band of mourners assembled in our thought 
around this spirit's unseen transition ! To how very few 
has it been given in human history' to enshrine their obse- 
quies in the blessings of an emancipated race ! And what 
witnesses to this man's heroic helpfulness, gathered from be- 
yond the seas, from cottage and from court, from masters of 
men and followers of freedom, from all who lead humanity 
and all who watch and labor for the coming of its universal 
religion that shall know no binding creed, no vjiin super- 
stition, no dividing lines of comnnmion ! Long shall we 
listen ere we shall fully appreciate the glad tidings of these 
messengers, beautiful on the mountains of a nation's grati- 
tude, of a world's memory. From that yet unrelieved race 
in whose service his life was spent, whose feet still stumble 
in the wilderness, whose hearts quake with the new perils 
into which our half- policies have brought them, there is yet 
to come the tribute which only a portion can render now ; 



REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 23 

for no coming tribulations, if such must be, will restrain the 
natural current of their gratitude to the name of this man, 
as one who of his own self-prompted love did for them in 
the days of their utter friendlessness a work more worthy of 
their homage than any later work of parties, statesmen, 
generals, armies or proclamations performed when the jus- 
tice long refused was extorted from an unwilling people by 
forces they could no longer resist. It is but too easy for a 
generation conversant only with political and military deal- 
ings with slavery, to disparage the moral protest and perma- 
nent educational power of the great abolition movement 
which for more than thirty year's rocked the foundation of 
church and state with its leaven of righteous appeal. But 
it will not be so in the days to come. The soul of the peo- 
ple was lifted by that steadfast pressure of an eternal prin- 
ciple, in which the noblest men and women bore their equal 
part ; though nothing but the thunder of invasion and over- 
turn could rouse its physical might for the final struggle. 
Nor can I grant that this our friend's departure closes an 
epoch of national history ; that we are passing into another, 
with new motives, methods, issues, arguments, and duties. 
No great epoch closes with the close of any human eyes in 
death. Not by such a figure shall we escape unfinished 
tasks ; not so suddenly dismiss the still-needed service of 
ideas, or of the men who have represented them. The gospel 
of the nation's duty and opportunity finds no new inter- 
pretation ; the old lessons stand fast, as the old policies and 
their perils return. It is the vice of our perfunctory politics 
that we expect fresh inspiration before we have learned to 
accept and honor what is already given ; that we expect to 
advance upon the airy trestle-work of stilted desires instead 
of the firm-laid track of duties done. 



24 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

A nation's growth is by stages where representatives come 
and go. But principles hold fast on its reluctance till they 
have shaped it to their law ; they forgive no broken jjromise, 
suffer no dropped threads in the woof of duty. The great 
Anti-Slavery message which its ever-hopeful prophet once 
thought had been heard and heeded, he himself found it his 
necessity to renew. New men and new occasions succeed 
the old ; but the epoch ends not till its idea is enthroned. 
No man is omniscient ; no man is faultless ; no prophet can 
foretell how the great sin of an age shall be put away ; but 
this cry that it must be put away, and that utterly and 
speedily, before aught else can prosper, — this will not cease 
till it is accomplished. What Garrison hoped from the 
sword of the spirit was found to require the sword of the 
flesh. But the prophet's limitations must not disparage his 
truth. Nor let the inevitable conditions on which his great 
censorship of established beliefs and institutions was lent 
make men unjust to his spirit, as somewhat that has had its 
day. Centered in the absolutism of a moral idea which 
would take no qualification from his desire or will, he could 
seem severe and strenuous in exacting its claim on the opin- 
ions of others. But who that knew him could doubt that 
tenderness and charity were the tidal wave that floated even 
his sternest denunciations of individual conduct, still more 
tlie emphasis of his argument for personal opinion with 
valued friends ? 

I do not forget that we are here to speak to private hearts, 
to a sense of domestic and personal bereavement that must 
overflow for the moment even the best appreciation of this 
public example and incalculable help. What can we do but 
bring full sheaves of a long-cherished sympathy with your 
memories of the unfailinfr liirht and sweetness that made 



REMARKS OF REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 25 

this large household the seed-ground of high ideals and united 
desires; the centre of communion for all generous hopes and 
plans for human weal ! With you we recall the simplicity 
of faith and feeling that kept its freshness alike in the in- 
dignation of a holy war and in the happy play of friendship 
and domestic life ; the inevitable spontaneity that always 
distinguishes moral genius from the common moralism that 
is trained by rules. We recall with you that swift and 
never-failing appreciation which welcomed, as I almost be- 
lieve, every faithful word that ever, throughout our struggle, 
fully broke the weak or criminal silence of pulpit and 
press ; that unfaltering trust that suffered no knees to 
weaken, no heart to flag, in the darkest hour ; and we recall 
with you the tender solicitude with which he guarded your 
integrity of conviction as his own. Never, surely, has it 
spoken so sublimely in your hearts as now that it is no 
longer an outward reliance, but a sure possession, and dear 
to the maturer love and liberty to which it led your way. 
And now that ripe integrity of soul has passed to its invisi- 
ble service in all its fullness, before its fire was dimmed by 
age, or its rod of power broken, or its clear vision impaired; 
without one fear or doubt or backward step to mar its unity 
or enfeeble the sense of its presence and its power. Can 
you, can we, ask for more than such euthanasi/ to crown the 
prophet, the father, the friend ? 

Our fairest households must be scattered ; our dearest 
communion fronts the hour of death ; every possession ripens 
into a renunciation ; the tree our ancestors planted outlasts 
our lifetimes as it did theirs ; the pictures that report our 
likeness seem to be the substance, we the shadows ; the 
longest day allotted for a man to work in is even fleeter 
now than it was in the unhurried ages when poets could 



26 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

liken it to notliing less swift in flight than the weaver's 
shuttle. Our bitter partings are the sure surrenders of our 
best to the friendly bosom of unseen laws into whose depths 
our own souls hasten to fall. But if what men know of 
truth, and justice, and beauty, and love, be real, then the 
truth and justice and love that men are, is immortal. For 
if we know only in part, yet are we of one spii'it and one 
substance with what we know, if our knowing is but life and 
power. To know and to be known, by participation in 
that which outlives lifetimes, policies, institutions, and holds 
men responsil)le to their best, and to the unity of each with 
all, is what in all ages has been believed to have conquered 
death. 

Blest is he among men whose ample and adequate task, 
nobly chosen, greatly loved and greatly achieved, shall live 
as a reality after him in those whom he loved and gave 
himself to serve ! And most blest among these are they 
in whose hearts that task and triumph abide, as the dear 
familiar light of a day that has shone through all their lives. 
There is no Rock of Ages but the living heart and mind 
of man ! 

" God blesses still the generous thought; 

And still the fitting word He speeds; 
And truth at his requiring taught 

lie quickens into deeds. 

" Where is the victory of the grave ? 
Wliat dust upon the spirit lies ? 
God keeps the sacred life He gave ; 
The prophet never dies." 

I have the honor to read to you a few tribute verses 
written for this occasion by John G. Whittier : — 



VERSES BY JOHN G. WHITTIER. 27 



GARRISON. 

The storm and peril overpast, 

The houpdiiig hatred shamed and still, 

Go, soul of freedom ! take at last 

The place which thou alone canst fill. 

Confirm the lesson taught of old — 
Life saved for self is lost, while they 

Who lose it in His service hold 
The lease of God's eternal day. 

Not for thyself, but for the slave 

Thy words of thunder shook the world ; 

No selfish griefs or hatred gave 

The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled. 

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 

We heard a tenderer undersong ; 
Thy very wrath from pity grew, 

From love of man thy hate of wrong. 

Now past and present are as one ; 

The life below is life above; 
Thy mortal years have but begun 

The immortality of love. 

With somewhat of thy lofty faith 

We lay thy outworn garment by. 
Give death I)ut what belongs to death. 

And life the life that cannot die ! 

Not for a soul like thine the calm 

Of selfish ease and joys of sense ; 
But duty, more than crown or palm, 

Its own exceeding recompense. 



28 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Go up and on ! thy day well done, 

Its morning promise well fulfilled, 
Arise to triumphs yet unwon, 

To holier tasks that God has willed. 

Go, leave behind thee all that mars 

The work below of man for man ; 
With the white legions of the stars 

Do service such as angels can. 

Wherever wrong shall right deny. 

Or suffering spirits urge their plea, 
Be thine a voice to smite the lie, 

A hand to set the captive free ! 

The quartette then sang, to the tune of "Lenox," the 
hymn commencing, "Ye tribes of Adam, join:" — 

" Ye tribes of Adam, join 

With heaven and earth and seas, 
And offer notes divine 
To your Creator's praise ; 
Ye holy throng of angels bright, 
In worlds of light begin the song. 

" The shining worlds above 
In glorious order stand. 
Or in swift courses move, 
Hy his supreme command: 
He spake the word, and all their frame 
From nothing came, to praise the Lord. 

" Let all the nations fear 

The God who rules above ; 
He brings his people near. 

And makes them taste his love : 
While earth and sky attempt his praise, 
His saints shall raise his honors hijrli." 



REMARKS OF THEODORE D. WELD. 29 

Theodore D. Weld next addressed the congregation. 

REMARKS OF THEODORE D. WELD. 

Friends, you have just heard the lines, written perhaps 
to-day, perhaps yesterday, by our own beloved poet, Whittier. 
I have in my hand a poem which he wrote almost fifty years 
ago, in the darkest hour of the midnight which brooded 
over our country. You are most of you, perhaps all, familiar 
with it. It is addressed to Mr. Garrison. Shall I read a 
single stanza ? I do it to illustrate a point strongly put by 
our brother who has just taken his seat ; that is, the power 
of a single soul, alone ^ of a single soul touched with sacred 
fire, a soul all of whose powers are enlisted, — the thought, 
the feeling, the susceptibility, the emotion, the indomitable 
will, the conscience that never shrinks, and always points to 
duty, — I say, the power which God has lodged in the hu- 
man mind, enabling it to do and to dare and to suffer every- 
thing, and thank God for the privilege of doing it. To show 
also how, when one soul is thus stirred in its innermost and 
to its uttermost, it is irresistible ; that wherever there are 
souls, here and there, and thick and fast, too, not merely 
one, and another, and another, of the great mass, but multi- 
tudes of souls are ready to receive the truth and welcome 
it, to incorporate it into their thought and feeling, to live 
and die for it. That was the effect of Garrison upon the 
soul of Whittier. He here gives us his testimony. The 
date of this is 1833, — almost fifty years ago. He says in 
the third stanza, — 

*' I love thee with a brother's love, 

I feel my pulses thrill », 

To mark thy spirit soar above 
The cloud of human ill. 



30 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

My heart hath leaped to answer thine, 

And echo back thy words, 
As leaps the warrior's at the shine 

And flash of kindred swords ! " 

Friends, in recounting the multiform cords upon which 
our great brother struck, and in following out those vibra- 
tions until we see them rouse the nation's heart, — in doing 
this we come to a point where we stand amazed beyond 
our belief ; we have seen nothing like it ; we have thought 
of nothing like it ; we know of nothing like it in the his- 
tory of tlie world ; where, on moral grounds, through the 
dictate of conscience, through the grasp of the intuitions, 
such force has been given to a single soul as to make it 
omnipotent. No wonder that the old prophet broke out, " I 
said, Ye are gods ! " When God pulsates in a human soul, 
God is there. Not the Infinite God, the eternal existence, 
but the power of God ; that which Jesus felt when He said, 
" To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the 
world, to bear witness unto the truth ; " and " the words I 
speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Think for 
a moment of Garrison, through his paper and by his speech, 
traversing the country, uttering words which fell with such 
force as to break the spell that was upon souls, rouse the 
latent and dormant and bring them to life, gird them with 
power, and put weapons into their lumds, arming them from 
head to foot, to go forth and fight in the moral warfare ! 

It has been said by those who have preceded me, that 
we are not here to mourn. In looking over tliis congrega- 
tion, I do not see a single face that seems to mourn. It is 
no hour for mourning. Why should we mourn here when 
they are exulting there ? When they are receiving him 
with greetings and with songs of joy upon their lips, and 



I 



REMARKS OF THEODORE D. WELD. 31 

putting the crown upon his head ! " Well-dones " and 
" Welcomes " are echoing there : why should be wailing 
here? We cannot wail. We are here to rejoice. We 
are here to make this a solemn and glorious festival of the 
spirit. We are here to thank God and take courage that 
such a man has lived. In de.vout gratitude we bow before 
Him, saying: "Blessing, and honor, and glory, and thanks- 
giving to Him that sitteth upon the throne, that He hath 
given us, given this nation, given the world, so precious a 
thing as a human soul such as animated that form which 
lies motionless there." 

Let us rejoice ! Tears will come to our eyes, but they 
are not tears of bereavement. If we have grief, it is the 
joy of grief. They are tears of love ; they are tears of 
s^Mnpathy ; they are tears of exultation. Blessed are we 
that we have lived at the same time when there walked the 
earth such a man as WiLLTAM Lloyd Garrison. We did 
not know him. Those that knew him best did not know 
his innermost and his uttermost. The world around did 
not know him, even those who most appreciated him. Fifty 
years hence there will be something written about Garrison 
that will show what no one has exhibited or can exhibit 
now, for then time enough will have elapsed for his influ- 
ence, the power of his soul, for those vast pulsations, so far- 
reaching, — time enough to trace out all those lines of in- 
fluence and show how they stamped hearts innumerable, and 
how they can be traced in vast and manifold effects. Great 
as the direct influence of the life of Garrison was, great as 
it is to the multitudes of the freedmen of the South who 
rise up to testify, great as is the direct influence which out- 
poured from his life, the indirect influences seem almost 
greater. He saw, at one of the main points of the human 



32 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

circle, something which compelled his attention, something 
which could not be ignoi'ed, which should not be left any 
longer ; and he lifted up his voice and cried out against it, 
beseeched, appealed, and summoned up help from every 
quarter, and touched with such force as no man else could 
the springs that could accomplish his object, — the abolition 
of slavery. 

But that was only one point in the great circle of human 
interests, human rights, and human well-being. Now, indi- 
rectly, this line being traversed as he traversed it, — all the 
light thrown upon rights that he threw, -^ why, it led to 
other points of the circle ; and then, as has been alluded to 
by our sister here, in considering the question of rights, what 
they are, it was seen that self-right is the foundation of all 
right, the nucleus, the centre, from which all other rights 
radiate ; that it is really the trunk of tlie tree of all rights, 
and that every other right is a mere relative right to self- 
right, in the centre ; and that the great heart that animates 
that right in the centre is mi/self. Take away the right to 
mi/self, and where is my right to my coat, or my book, or 
my anything else ? It is nothing ; it is uprooted and cast 
away to wither ! He brought his mind to a focus upon the 
fundamental right, the intrinsic, the absolute, the eternal, 
the ineradicable right — self-right. And that was the rea- 
son why he uttered what are called such hard words about 
slaveholding. It was the same conviction tliat hred the 
soul of old John Wesley, — blessings on him ! — when he 
said, " Shivery is the sum of all villanies ! " No wonder he 
used words that sounded hard to those very soft and shrink- 
ing people wlio loved smooth things, and to those who sym- 
pathized with slavery. Why, when he saw the slaveholder 
not merely asserting his right to a man as a piece of prop- 



REMARKS OF THEODORE D. WELD. 33 

erty, but when lie saw him stalking over all this New Eng- 
land and claiming the right to absorb into himself the self- 
right of another self and call it his, make it an article of 
property, and send it to the auction-block, no wonder he 
roused at length the North, no wonder the slaveholders 
put a price upon his head, because there he touched the 
apple of their eye. He had struck the very heart of the 
monster. It was a death-blow, and that must be fended off, 
or all must be given up. 

Friends, you have been detained long already. I ought 
not to keep you from those words to which you are waiting 
to listen, fi'om our brother who, more than any one else, 
struck blows and uttered words such as no other could ex- 
cept the great leader, — uttered words, gave a testimony, 
and stamped an impression upon the nation's heart. You 
want to hear him, and not to hear me. But let me ask 
your patience for a moment longer. Some have said, we are 
not here to eulogize our brother. It really seems as though 
words were very weak in eulogy of William Lloyd 
Gakrisox. The truth is, we are shut up to the necessity 
of praising him. We cannot speak his name but it is the 
highest praise that can be given him. Who does not recog- 
nize that ? Who can speak of a single one of his acts with- 
out that act rising up and testifying to what he was, to 
what he is, to what he has done, and what no other man 
did or could do ? No, it is all around, from centre to circum- 
ference alike ! See how the whole land is strewn with his 
deeds ! See how the very air breathes of them ! See how 
the very tones of the wind, as they go through the forest, 
shout them I The fact is, nothing that he has done can be 
spoken of that is not a eulogy. And yet, if those cold lips 
could move and utter words, it seems to me they would say, 

3 



34 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

" 111 tins hour let eulog3^ be dumb ! " Blessed brother ! we 
would let eulogy be dumb, if it were possible. But then 
we must stand dumb ourselves. We can say nothing at 
such a time as this if we cannot speak of what he has done, 
and every act is a eulogy. Why, those words that were re- 
peated by our brother who has addressed you, — what mar- 
velous words they were ! Marvelous they will be forever. 

Let us for a moment look back fifty yeai's. We see. a 
church dead ! Not merely blind and palsied, but dead to the 
sin of slavery. Whatever life it had, there was no pulsation 
indicating that it realized the sin of slavery. Look back 
there ! What do we see ? A great bank of darkness, in 
which the church lies dead ; and as we look, we see a single 
hand unshrinkingl}' thrust out from the thickest of that 
darkness and writing a dozen simple words, little fireside 
words ; writing them so large that they can be seen and read 
from far. We see those words take on a glow in the midst 
of the very darkness. We see those letters every one turned 
to a letter of fire. And what was written there? You have 
heard them already ; you know them by heart : "/am in 
earnest. I ivill not equivocate — / will not excuse — I ivitl 
not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard ! " Take 
the circumstances and conditions of the time in which they 
were uttered, consider the great soul that propelled them 
forth, consider that he felt the necessity upon him and a woe 
unto him if he did not utter them, — consider all this, and 
then tell me whether such words have ever been uttered by 
other mortal lips ! Those words were the passwords of Lib- 
erty. They were the keynote, struck by him so loud that 
they startled the nation. Thank God that there was one 
man in those times who could utter them ; who had a soul 
large enough, deep enough, strong enough, fired enough, 
godlike enough, to utter them ! 



REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 35 

The quartette then sang the following hymn, the congre- 
gation spontaneously rising and joining in singing the fa- 
miliar words, to the tune of " Amsterdam : " — 

" Rise, my soul ! and stretch thy wings, — 

Thy better portion trace ; 
Rise, from transitory things, 

Towards heaven, thy native place. 
Sun and moon and stars decay, 

Time shall soon this earth remove ; 
Rise, my soul ! and haste away 

To seats prepared above. 

" Rivers to the ocean run. 

Nor stay in all their course ; 
Fire ascending seeks the sun, — 

Both speed them to their source : 
So a soul that 's born of God 

Pants to view his glorious face, 
Upward tends to his abode, 

To rest in his embrace." 

REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

It has been well said that we are not here to weep, and 
neither are we here to praise. No life closes without sad- 
ness. Death, after all, no matter what hope or what mem- 
ories surround it, is terrible and a mystery. We never part 
hands that have been clasped life-long in loving tenderness 
but the hour is sad ; still, we do not come here to weep. 
In other moments, elsewhere, we can offer tender and lov- 
ing sympathy to those whose roof-tree is so sadly bereaved. 
But in the spirit of the great life which we commemorate, 
this hour is for the utterance of a lesson ; this hour is given 



36 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

to contemplate a grand example, a rich inheritance, a noble 
life worthily ended. You come together, not to pay tribute, 
even loving tribute, to the friend you have lost, whose feat- 
ures you will miss from daily life, but to remember the 
grand lesson of that career ; to speak to each other and to 
emphasize what that life teaches, — especially in the hearing 
of these young listeners, who did not see that marvelous 
career ; in their hearing to construe the meaning of the great 
name which is borne world-wide, and tell them why on both 
sides the ocean, the news of his death is a matter of interest 
to every lover of his race. As my friend said, we have no 
right to be silent. Those of us who stood near him, who 
witnessed the secret springs of his action, the consistent in- 
ward and outward life, have no right to be silent. The 
hirgest contribution that will ever be made by any single 
man's life to the knowledge of the working of our institu- 
tions will be the picture of his career. He sounded the 
depths of the weakness, he proved the ultimate strength, of 
republican institutions ; he gave us to know the perils that 
confront us ; he taught us to rally the strength that lies 
hid. 

To my mind there are three remarkable elements in his 
career. One is rare even among great men. It was his 
own moral nature, unaided, uninfluenced from outside, that 
consecrated him to a great idea. Other men ripen gradu- 
ally. The youngest of the great American names that will 
be compared with his was between thirty and forty when 
his first anti-slavery word was uttered. Luther was thirty- 
four years old when an infamous enterprise woke him to in- 
dignation, and it then took two years more to reveal to him 
the mission God designed for him. This man was in jail 
for his opinions when he was just twenty-four. He had 



REMARKS BY WENDELL PHILLIPS. 37 

confronted a nation in the very bloom of his youth. It 
could be said of him more than of any other American in 
our day, and more than of any great leader that I chance 
now to remember in any epoch, that he did not need cir- 
cumstances, outside influence, some great pregnant event 
to press him into service, to provoke him to thought, to 
kindle him into enthusiasm. His moral nature was as mar- 
velous as was the intellect of Pascal. It seemed to be born 
fully equipped, " finely touched." Think of the mere dates ; 
tliink that at some twenty-four years old, while Christian- 
ity and statesmanship, the experience, the genius of the 
land, were wandering in the desert, aghast, amazed, and 
confounded over a frightful evil, a great sin, this boy sounded, 
found, invented the talisman, " Immediate, unconditional 
emancipation on the soil." You may say he borrowed it 
— true enough — from the lips of a woman on the other 
side of the Atlantic, but he was the only American whose 
moral nature seemed, just on the edge of life, so perfectly 
open to duty and truth that it answered to the far-off bugle- 
note, and proclaimed it instantly as a complete solution of 
the problem. 

Young men, you have no conception of the miracle of 
that insight ; for it is not given to you to remember with 
any vividness the blackness of the darkness of ignorance 
and indifference which then brooded over what was called 
the moral and religious element of the American people. 
When I think of him, as Melancthon said of Luther, "day 
by day grows the wonder fresh " at the ripeness of the 
moral and intellectual life that God gave him at the very 
opening. 

You hear that boy's lips announcing the statesmanlike 
solution which startled politicians and angered church and 



38 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

people. A year afterwards, with equally single-hearted 
devotion, in words that have been so often quoted, with 
those dungeon doors behind him, he enters on his career. 
In January, 1831, then twenty-five years old, he starts the 
publication of the " Liberator," advocating the immediate 
abolition of slavery ; and, with the sublime pledge, " I will 
be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On 
this subject I do not wish to speak or write with modera- 
tion. 1 will not equivocate — I will not exc^ise — I will not 
retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.-" 

Then began an agitation which for the marvel of its 
origin, the majesty of its purpose, the earnestness, unself- 
ishness and ability of its appeals, the vigor of its assault, 
the deep national convulsion it caused, the vast and benefi- 
cent changes it wrought, and its wide-spread, indirect in- 
fluence on all kindred moral questions, is without a parallel 
in history since Luther. This boy created and marshaled 
it. His converts held it up and carried it on. Before this, 
all through the preceding centur}^ there had been among 
us scattered and single abolitionists, earnest and able men ; 
sometimes, like Wythe of Virginia, in high places. The 
Quakers and Covenanters had never intermitted their testi- 
mony against slavery. But Garrison was the first man to 
begin a movement designed to annihilate slavery. He an- 
nounced the principle, arranged the method, gathered the 
forces, enkindled the zeal, started the argument, and finally 
marshaled the nation for and against the system in a con- 
flict that came near rending the Union. 

I marvel again at the instinctive sagacity which discerned 
the hidden forces fit for such a movement, called them forth, 
and wielded them to such prompt results, Archimedes said, 
" Give me a spot and I will move the world." O'Connell 



REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 39 

leaned back on three millions of Irishmen, all on five with 
sjnnpathy. Cobden's hands Avere held up by the whole 
manufactnring interest of Great Britain; his treasury was 
the wealth of tlie middle classes of the country, and behind 
him also, in fair proportion, stood the religious convictions 
of England. Marvelous was their agitation ; as you gaze 
upon it in its successive stages and analyze it, you are as- 
tonished at what they invented for tools. But this boy 
stood alone ; utterly alone, at first. There was no sympathy 
anywhere ; his hands were empty ; one single penniless 
comrade was his only helper. Starving on bread and water, 
he could command the use of types, that was all. Trade 
endeavored to crush him ; the intellectual life of America 
disowned him. 

My friend Weld has said the chvirch was a thick bank 
of black cloud looming over him. Yes. But no sooner did 
the church discern the impetuous boy's purpose than out 
of that dead, sluggish cloud thundered and lightened a ma- 
lignity which could not find words to express its hate. The 
very pulpit where I stand saw this apostle of liberty and 
justice sore beset, always in great need, and often in deadly 
peril ; yet it never gave him one word of approval or sym- 
pathy. During all his weary struggle, Mr. Garrison felt 
its weight in the scale against him. In those years it led 
the sect which arrogates to itself the name of Liberal. If 
this was the bearing of so-called Liberals, what bitterness 
of opposition, judge ye, did not the others show ? A mere 
boy confronts church, commerce, and college ; a boy, with 
neither training nor experience ! Almost at once the as- 
sault tells ; the whole country is hotly interested. What 
created such life under those ribs of death ? Whence came 
that instinctive knowledge ? Where did he get that sound 



40 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

common sense ? Whence did he summon that abnost un- 
erring sagacity which, starting agitation on an untried field, 
never committed an error, provoking year by year addi- 
tional enthusiasm ; gathering, as he advanced, helper after 
helper to his side ! I marvel at the miraculous boy. He 
had no means. Where he got, whence he summoned, how 
he created, the elements which changed 1830 into 1835 
— 1830 apathy, indifference, ignorance, icebergs, into 1835, 
evei-y man intelligently hating him, and mobs assaulting 
him in every city — is a marvel which none but older men 
than I can adequately analyze and explain. He said to a 
friend who remonstrated with him on the heat and severity 
of his language, " Brother, I have need to be all on fire, for 
I have mountains of ice about me to melt." Well, that 
dungeon of 1830, that universal apathy, that deadness of 
soul, tiiat contempt of what called itself intellect, in ten 
years he changed into the whole country aflame. He made 
every single home, press, pulpit, and senate-chamber a de- 
bating society, with Ids right and wrong for the subject. 
And as was said of Luther, " God honored him by making 
all the worst men his enemies." 

Fastened on that daily life was a malignant attention and 
criticism such as no American has ever endured. I will 
not call it a criticism of hate ; that word is not strong 
enough. Malignity searched him with candles from the 
moment he uttered that God-given solution of the prob- 
lem to the moment when he took the hand of the nation 
and wrote out the statute which mad(» it law. jNIalignity 
searched those forty years with candles, and yet even ma- 
lignity has never lisped a suspicion, much less a charge — 
never lisped a suspicion of anything mean, dishonorable, 
dishonest. No man, however mad with hate, however fierce 



REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 41 

in assault, ever dared to hint that there was anything low 
in motive, false in assertion, selfish in purpose, dishonest in 
method — never a stain on the thought, the word, or the 
deed. 

Now contemplate this boy entering such an arena, con- 
fronting a nation and all its forces, utterly poor, with no 
sympathy from any quarter, conducting an angry, wide- 
spread, and profound agitation for ten, twenty, forty years, 
amid the hate of everything strong in American life, and 
the contempt of everything influential, and no stain, not the 
slightest shadow of one, rests on his escutcheon ! Summon 
me the public men, the men who have put their hands to 
the helm of the vessel of state since 1789, of whom that 
can be said, although love and admiration, which almost 
culminated in worship, attended the steps of some of them. 

Then look at the work he did. My friends have spoken 
of his influence. What American ever held his hand so 
long and so powerfully on the helm of social, intellectual, 
and moral America ? There have been giants in our day. 
Great men God has granted in widely different spheres; 
earnest men, men whom public admiration lifted early into 
power. I shall venture to name some of them. Perhaps 
you will say it is not usual on an occasion like this, but 
lono-waitiup; truth needs to be uttered in an hour when 
this great example is still absolutely indispensable to in- 
spire the effort, to guide the steps, to cheer the hope, of the 
nation not yet arrived in the promised land. I want to 
show you the vast breadth and depth that this man's name 
signifies. We have had Webster in the Senate ; we have 
had Lyman Beecher in the pulpit ; we have had Caliioun 
at' the head of a section ; we have had a philosopher at Con- 
cord with his inspiration penetrating the young mind of the 



42 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Northern States. They are the four men that history, per- 
haps, will mention somewhere near the great force whose 
closing in this scene we commemorate to-day. Remember 
now not merel}' the inadequate means at this man's con- 
trol, not simply the bitter hate that he confronted, not the 
vast work that he must be allowed to have done, — surely 
vast, when measured by the opposition he encountered and 
the strength he held in his hands, — but dismissing all those 
considerations, measuring nothing but the breadth and depth 
of his hold, his grasp on American character, social change, 
and general progress, what man's signet has been set so deep, 
planted so forever on the thoughts of his epoch ? Trace 
home intelligently, trace home to their sources, the changes 
social, political, intellectual and religious, that have come 
over us during the last fifty j'ears, — the volcanic convulsions, 
the stormy waves which have tossed and rocked our genera- 
tion, — and you will find close at the sources of the Mis- 
sissippi this boy with his proclamation I 

The great party that put on record the statute of freedom 
was made up of men whose conscience he quickened and 
whose intellect he inspired, and they long stood the tools of 
a public opinion that he created. The grandest name be- 
side his in the America of our times is that of John Brown. 
Brown stood on the platform that Garrison built ; and Mrs. 
Stowe herself charmed an audience that he gathered for 
her, with words which he inspired, from a heart that he 
kindled. Sitting at his feet were leaders born of the " Lib- 
erator," the guides of public sentiuient. I know whereof I 
affirm. It was often a pleasant boast of Charles Sumner 
that he read the " Liberator " two years before I did, and 
among the great men who followed his lead and held up his 
hands in Massachusetts, where is the intellect, where is the 



REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 43 

lieart that does not trace to this printer boy the first pulse 
that bade him serve the slave ? For myself, no words can 
adequately tell the measureless debt I owe him, the moral 
and intellectual life he opened to me. I feel like the old 
Greek, who, taught himself by Socrates, called his own 
scholars "the disciples of Socrates." 

This is only another instance added to the roll of the 
Washingtons and the Hampdens, whose root is not ability, 
but character ; that influence which, like the great Mas- 
ter's of Judea (humanly speaking), spreading through the 
centuries, testifies that the world suffers its grandest changes 
not by genius, but by the more potent control of character. 
His was an earnestness that would take no denial, that 
consumed opposition in the intensity of its convictions, that 
knew nothing but right. As friend after friend gathered 
slowly, one by one, to his side, in that very meeting of a 
dozen heroic men, to form the New England Anti-Slavery 
Society, it was his compelling hand, his resolute unwilling- 
ness to temper or qualify the utterance, that finally dedi- 
cated that first organized movement to the doctrine of im- 
mediate emancipation. He seems to have understood — this 
boy without experience — he seems to have understood by 
instinct that righteousness is the only thing wliicli will 
finally compel submission ; that one, with God, is always a 
majority. He seems to have known it at the very outset, 
taught of God, the herald and champion, God-endowed and 
God-sent to arouse a nation, that only by the most absolute 
assertion of the uttermost truth, without qualification or 
compromise, can a nation be waked to conscience or strength- 
ened for duty. No man ever understood so thoroughly — 
not O'Connell, nor Cobden — the nature and needs of that 
agitation which alone, in our day, reforms states. In the 



44 FUNERAL, OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

darkest liour he never doubted the omnipotence of conscience 
and the moral sentiment. 

And then look at the unquailing courage with which he 
faced the successive obstacles that confronted him ! jNIodest, 
believing at the outset that America could not be as cor- 
rupt as she seemed, he wails at the door of the churches, 
importunes leading chirgymen, begs for a voice from the 
sanctuary, a consecrated protest from the pulpit. To his 
utter amazement, he learns, by thus probing it, that the 
church will give him no help, but, on the contrary, surges 
into the moveuient in opposition. Serene, though astounded 
by the unexpected revelation, he simply turns his footsteps, 
and announces that " a Christianity which keeps peace 
with the oppressor is no Christianity," and goes on his way 
to supplant the religious element which the church had 
allied with sin by a deeper religious faith. Yes, he sets 
himself to work, this stripling with his sling confronting the 
angry giant in complete steel, this solitary evangelist, to 
make Christians of twenty millions of people ! I am not ex- 
aggerating. You know, older men, who can go back to that 
period ; I know that when one, kindred to a voice that you 
have heard to-day, whose pathway Garrison's bloody feet 
had made easier for the treading, when he uttei'ed in a pul- 
])it in Boston only a few strong words, injected in the course 
of a sermon, his venerable father, between seventy and 
eighty years, was met the next morning and his hand 
shaken by a much moved friend. " Colonel, you have my 
sympathy. I cannot tell you how much I pity you." 
"What," said the brusque old man, " what is your pity ?" 
''Well, I hear your son went crazy at 'Church Green' 
yesterday." Such was the utter indifference. At that time, 
bloody feet had smoothed the pathway for other men to 



REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 45 

tread. Still, then and for years afterwards, insanity was 
the only kind-hearted excuse that partial friends could find 
for sympathy with such a madman ! 

If anything strikes one more prominently than another in 
this career — to your astonishment, young men, you may say 
— it is the plain, sober common sense, the robust English 
element which underlay Cromwell, which explains Hamp- 
den, which gives the color that distinguishes 1640 in Eng- 
land from 1790 in France. Plain, robust, well-balanced 
common sense. Nothing erratic ; no enthusiasm which had 
lost its hold on firm earth ; no mistake of method ; no 
unmeasured confidence; no miscalculation of the enemy's 
strength. Whoever mistook. Garrison seldom mistook. 
Fewer mistakes in that long agitation of fifty years can be 
charged to his account than to any other American. Erratic 
as men supposed him, intemperate in utterance, mad in judg- 
ment, an enthusiast gone crazy, the moment you sat down 
at his side, patient in explanation, clear in statement, sound 
in judgment, studying carefully every step, calculating every 
assault, measuring the force to meet it, never in haste, al- 
ways patient, waiting until the time ripened, — fit for a 
great leader. Cull, if you please, from the statesmen who 
obeyed him, whom he either whipped into submission or 
summoned into existence, cull from among them the man 
whose career, fairly examined, exhibits fewer miscalcula- 
tions and fewer mistakes than .this cai'eer which is just 
ended. 

I know what I claim. As Mr. Weld has said, I am 
speaking to-day to men who judge by their ears, by rumors; 
who see, not with their eyes, but with their prejudices. His- 
tory, fifty years hence, dispelling your prejudices, will do 
justice to the grand sweep of the orbit which, as my friend 



46 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

said, to-day we are hardly in a position, or mood, to meas- 
ure. As Coleridge avers, " The truth-haters of to-morrow 
will ffive the right name to the truth haters of to-dav, for 
even such men the stream of time bears onward." I do not 
fear that if my words are remembered by the next gener- 
ation they will be thought unsupported or extravagant. 
When history seeks the sources of New England character, 
when men begin to open up and examine the hidden springs 
and note the convulsions and the throes of American life 
within the last half century, they will remember Parker, 
that Jupiter of the pulpit ; they will remember the long 
unheeded but measureless influence that came to us from 
the seclusion of Concord ; they will do justice to the mas- 
terly statesmanship which guided, during a part of his life, 
the efforts of Webster, but they will recognize that there 
was only one man north of Mason and Dixon's line who 
met squarely, with an absolute logic, the else impregnable 
position of John C. Calhoun ; only one brave, far-sighted, 
keen, logical intellect, which discerned that there were only 
two moral points in the universe, right and ivrong ; that 
when one was asserted, subterfuge and evasion would be 
sure to end in defeat. 

Here lie the brain and the heart ; here lies the statesman- 
like intellect, logical as Jonathan Edwards, brave as Lu- 
ther, which confronted tlie logic of South Carolina with an 
assertion direct and broad enough to make an issue and 
necessitate a conflict of two civilizations. Calhoun said, 
Slavery is right. Webster and Clay shrunk from him and 
evaded his assertion. Garrison, alone at that time, met 
him face to face, proclaiming slavery a sin and daring all 
the inferences. It is true, as New Orleans complains to-day 
in her journals, that this man brought upon America every- 



REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 47 

thing they call the disaster of the last twenty years ; and it 
is equally true that if. you seek through the hidden causes 
and unheeded events for the hand that wrote " emancipa- 
tion " on the statute-book and on the flag, it lies still there 
to-day. 

I have no time to number the many kindred reforms to 
which he lent as profound an earnestness and almost as large 
aid. 

I hardly dare enter that home. There is one other 
marked, and, as it seems to me, unprecedented, element in 
this career. His was the happiest life I ever saw. No 
need for pity. Let no tear fall over his life. No man 
gathered into his bosom a fuller sheaf of blessing, delight, 
and joy. In his seventy years, there were not arrows enough 
in the whole quiver of the church or state to wound hiiii. 
As Guizot once said from the tribune, " Gentlemen, you 
cannot get high enough to reach the level of my contempt." 
So Garrison, from the serene level of his daily life, from the 
faith that never faltered, was able to say to American hate, 
" You cannot reach up to the level of my home mood, my 
daily existence." I have seen him intimately for thirty 
years, while raining on his head was the hate of the com- 
munity, when by every possible form of expression malig- 
nity let him know that it wished him all sorts of harm. I 
never saw him unhappy ; I never saw the moment that se- 
rene, abounding faith in the rectitude of his motive, the 
soundness of his method, and the certainty of his success did 
not lift him above all possibility of being reached by any 
clamor about him. Every one of his near friends will agree 
with me that this was the happiest life God has granted 
in our day to any American standing in the foremost rank 
of influence and efifort. 



48 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Adjournecl from the stoi'iniest meeting, where hot debate 
had roused all his powers as near to anger as his nature ever 
let him come, the music of a dozen voices — even of those who 
had just opposed him — or a piano, if the house held one, 
changed his mood in an instant, and made the hour laugh 
with more than content ; unless indeed, a baby and playing 
with it proved metal even more attractive. 

To champion wearisome causes, bear with disordered in- 
tellects, to shelter the wrecks of intemperance and fugitives 
whose pulse trembled at every touch on the door-latch — 
this was his home ; keenly alive to human suffering, ever 
prompt to help I'elieve it, pouring out his means for that 
more lavishly than he ought — all this was no burden, 
never clouded or depressed the inextinguishable buoyancy 
and gladness of his nature. God ever held over him un- 
clouded the sunlight of his countenance. 

i\nd he never grew old. The tabernacle of flesh grew 
feebler and the step was less elastic. But the ability to 
work, the serene faith and unflagging hope suffered no 
change. To the day of his death he was as ready as in his 
boyhood to confront and defy a mad majority. The keen 
insight and clear judgment never failed him. His tenacity 
of purpose never weakened. He showed nothing either of 
the intellectual sluggishness or the timidity of age. The 
bugle-call which, last year, woke the nation to its peril and 
duty ou the Southern question, showed all the old fitness to 
lead and mould a people's course. Younger men might be 
confused or dazed by plausible pretensions, and half the 
North was befooled ; but the old pioneer detected the false 
ring as quickly as in his youth. The words his dying hand 
traced, welcoming the Southern exodus and foretelling its 
result, had all the defiant courage and prophetic solemnity 
of his youngest and boldest days. 



REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 49 

Serene, feai'less, m.ii'velous man ! Mortal, with so few 
shortcomings ! 

Farewell, for a very little while, noblest of Christian 
men ! Leader, brave, tireless, unselfish ! When the ear 
heard thee, then it blessed thee ; the eye that saw thee gave 
witness to thee. More trul}^ than it could ever heretofore 
be said since the great patriarch wrote it, " the blessing of 
him that was ready to perish " was thine eternal great re- 
ward. 

Though the clouds rest for a moment to-day on the great 
work that you set your heart to accomplish, you knew, God 
in his love let you see, that your work was done ; that one 
thing, by his blessing on your efforts, is fixed beyond the 
possibility of change. While that ear could listen, God 
gave what He has so rarely given to man, the plaudits and 
prayers of four millions of victims, thanking you for eman- 
cipation, and through the clouds of to-day your heart, as it 
ceased to beat, felt certain, certain, that whether one flag or 
two shall rule this continent in time to come, one thing is 
settled — it never henceforth can be trodden by a slave I 

Mr. May. — A word should properly be said in acknowl- 
edgment of the great courtesy which has granted to the 
family and the friends of Mr. Garrison in this large audi- 
ence the use of this spacious house. We all recognize the 
courtesy, and offer our thanks. 

I am desired to say that those in this audience who would 
like to look once more upon what remains of WiLLlAM 
Lloyd Garrison will have now an opportunity to do so. 

Almost the entire congregation availed themselves of this 
privilege, and then the body was taken from the church to 

4 



50 FUNERAL OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Forest Hills Cemetery, where, as the hist rays of the setting 
sun rested upon this beautiful " city of the dead," and glori- 
fied the spot, with tender and reverent hands it was laid in 
the grave, in the presence of his children and grandchildren, 
and very many of his old associates in the struggle for free- 
dom. The services were fitly closed by the singing of the 
hymn commencing: "I cannot always trace the way," by 
the friends who had rendered such acceptable service at the 
church, and all that was mortal of William Lloyd Gar- 
rison was left to its rest. 



THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS. 

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

" Some time afterward, it was reported to me by the cit}- offirers that they had 
ferreted out the paper and its editor. His office was an obscure hole ; liis only vis- 
ible auxiliary a ne^jro boy; and his supporters a few very insignificant persons, of 
all colors." — Letter of lion. H. G. Otis. 

In a small chamber, fi-iendless and unseen, 

Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man ; 

The place was dark, uufurnitnred and mean, 
Yet there the freedom of a race began. 

Help came but slowly ; surely, no man yet 

Put lever to the heavy world with less ; 
What need of help ? He knew how types were set, 

He had a dauntless spirit and a press. 

Such earnest natures are the fiery pitli, 

The compact nucleus round which systems grow ; 

Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, 
And whirls impregnate with the central glow. 

O Truth ! O Freedom ! how are ye still born 

In the rude stable, in the manger nursed ! 
What humble hands unbar those gates of morn 

Through which the splendors of the New Day burst ! 



What! shall one monk, scarce known beyond his cell. 
Front Rome's far-reaching bolts, and scorn her frown ? 

Brave Luther answered, Yes! — that thunder's swell 
Rocked Europe, and discharmed the triple crown. 



52 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

'• AVhatever can be known of Earth we know," 

Sneered Europe's wise men, in their snail-shells curled 
No I said one man in Genoa ; and that No 
Out of the dark created this New World. 

Who is it will not dare himself to trust? 

AVho is it hath not strength to stand alone? 
Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward must ? 

He and his works like sand from earth are blown. 

Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here ! 

See one straightforward conscience put in pawn 
To win a world ! See the obedient sphere. 

By bravery's simple gravitation drawn ! 

Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, 
And by the Present's lips repeated still. 

In our own single manhood to be bold, 

Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will ? 

We stride the river daily at its spring. 

Nor in our childish thoughtlessness foresee 
What myriad vassal streams shall tribute bring. 

How like an ecjual it shall greet the sea. 

O small beginnings, ye are great and strong. 
Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain ; 

Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, 
Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain I 



APPENDIX. 



HELEN ELIZA BENSON, 

Wife, of William Lloyd Garnson. 

[As this volume will be read by many who have never seen the Memorial volume 
to Mrs. Garrison, prepared b\' her husband after her death, in 1876, for private 
distribution among friends, it is deemed fitting that the following tribute to her 
character, in the remarks of Wendell Phillips at her funeral, should be included 
in these pages.] 

REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

How hard it is to let our friends go ! We cling to them as if 
separation were separation forever ; and yet, as life uears its end, 
and we tread the last years together, have we any right to be sur- 
prised that the circle grows narrow ? — that so many fall, one after 
another, at our side? Death seems to strike very frequently ; bat 
it is only the natural, inevitable fate, however sad for the moment. 

Some of us can recollect, only twenty years ago, the large and 
loving group that lived and worked together ; the joy of compan- 
ionship, sympathy with each other — almost our only joy — for the 
outlook was very dark, and our toil seemed almost vain. The 
world's dislike of what we aimed at, the social frown, obliged us to 
be all the world to each other ; and yet it was a full life. The life 
was worth living ; the labor was its own reward ; we lacked nothing* 

As I stand by this dust, my thoughts go freshly back to those 
pleasant years when the warp and woof of her life were woven so 
close to the rest of us ; when the sight of it was such an inspira- 
tion. How cheerfully she took up daily the burden of sacrifice and 
effort ! With what serene courage she looked into the face of peril 
to her own life, and to those who were dearer to her than life I A 
young bride brought under such dark skies, and so ready for them. 
Trained among Friends, with the blood of martyrdom and self-sacri- 
fice in her veins, she came so naturally to the altar ! And when the 
gallows was erected in front of the young bride's windows, never 
from that stout soul did the husband get look or word that bade 
him do anything but go steadily forward, and take no counsel of 



54 HELEN ELIZA GARRISON. 

man. Sheltered iu the jail, a great city hunting for his life, how 
strong he must have been when they brought him his young wife's 
brave words : " I know my husband will never betray his princi- 
ples ! " Helpmeet, indeed, for the pioneer in that terrible fight. 
The most unselfish of human beings, she poured all her strength 
into the lives of those about her, without asking acknowledgment 
or recognition, unconscious of the sacrifice. With marvelous abil- 
ity, what would have been weary burdens to others, she lifted so 
gayly ! A young mother, with the cares of a growing family, not 
rich in means, only her own hands to help, yet never failing in 
cheerful welcome to every call ; doing for others as if her life was 
all leisure and her hands full. With i*are executive ability, doing 
a great deal, and so easily as to never seem burdened ! Who ever 
saw her reluct at any sacrifice her own purpose or her husband's 
made necessary? No matter how long and weary the absence, no 
matter how lonely he left her, she cheered and strengthened him to 
the sacrifice if his great cause asked it. The fair current of her 
husband's grand purpose swept on unchecked by any distracting 
anxiety. Her energy and unselfishness left him all his strength free 
for the world's service. 

Many of you have seen her only in years when illness hindered 
her power. You can hardly appreciate the large help she gave the 
Anti-Slavery movement. 

That home was a great help. Her husband's word and pen 
scattered his purpose far and wide ; but the comrades that liis ideas 
brought to his side her welcome melted into friends. No niatter 
how various and discordant they were in many things — no niatter 
how much there was to bear and overlook — her patience and her 
thanks for their sympathy in the great idea were always sufficient 
for this work also. She made a family of them, and her roof was 
always a home for all. And who shall say liow much that served 
the great cause ? Yet drudgery did not choke thouglit ; care never 
narrowed her interest. Slie was not merely the mother, or the 
head of a home ; her own life and her husband's moved hand in 
hand in such loving accord, seemed so exactly one, that it was 
hard to divide their work. At the fireside, — in the hours, not fre- 



HELEN ELIZA GARRISON . 55 

quent, of relaxation, — in scenes of stormy debate, — that beau- 
tiful presence, of rare sweetness and dignit}^, what an inspiration 
and power it was ! And then the mother — fond, painstaking, 
faithful ! No mother who bars every generous thought out from 
her life, and in severe seclusion forgets everything but her children 
— no such mother was ever more exact in every duty, ready for 
every care, faithful at every point, more lavish in fond thoughtful- 
ness, than this mother, whose cares never narrowed the broad idea 
of life she brought from her girlhood's home. 

Who can forget her modest dignity — shrinkiugly modest — yet 
ever equal to the high place events called her to ? In that group 
of remarkable men and women which the Anti-Slavery movement 
drew together, she had her own niche, — which no one else could 
have filled so perfectly or unconsciously as she did. And in that 
rounded life no over-zeal in one channel, no extra service at one 
point, need be offered as excuse for shortcoming elsewhere. She 
forgot, omitted nothing. How much we all owe her ! She is not 
dead. She has gone before ; but she has not gone away. Nearer 
than ever, this very hour she watches and ministers to those in 
whose lives she was so wrapped; to whose happiness she was so de- 
voted. Who thinks that loving heart could be happy if it were 
not allowed to minister to those she loved ? How easy it is to 
fancy the welcome the old faces have given her ! The honored 
faces ; the familiar faces ; the old tones, that have carried her back 
to the pleasant years of health, and strength, and willing labor ! 
How gladly she broke the bonds that hindered her activity ! There 
are more there than here. Very slight the change seems to her ! 
She has not left us, — she has rejoined them. She has joined the 
old band that worked life-long for the true and the good. The dear, 
familiar names, how freshly they come to our lips ! We can see 
them bend over and lift her up to them, to a broader life. Faith 
is sight to-day. She works on a higher level ; ministers to old 
ideas ; guards lovingly those she went through life with. Even 
in that higher work they watch for our coming also. Let the 
years yet spared us here be warning to make ourselves fit for that 
companionship ! 



56 HELEN ELIZA GARRISON. 

The separation is hard. Nature will have its way. " The 
heart knoweth its own bitterness," and for a while loves to dwell 
on it ; needs perhaps to dwell on it. But the hour is just here, 
knocking at the door, when we shall thank God not only for the 
long years of companionship, and health, and example, which she 
has given us, but for this great relief: that, in fullness of time, in 
loving-kindness, He hath broken the bond which hindered her. No 
heaven that is not a home to her. She worked with God here, and 
He has taken her into his nearer presence. We are sad because of 
the void at our side. It is hard to have the path so empty around 
us. We miss that face and those tones But that is the body : 
limited, narrow, of little faith. The soul shines through in a mo- 
ment, sees its own destiny, and thanks God for the joyous change 
We draw sad breaths now. We miss the magnet that kept this 
home together. We miss the tie that lovingly bound so many lives 
into one life. That is broken. We peer into the future and 
fear for another void still, and a narrower circle, not knowing 
which of us will be taken next. With an effort of patience — with 
half-submission — we bow to God's dealings. That is only for an 
hour. In a little while we shall remember the grand life ; we shall 
thank God for the contribution it has made to the educating forces 
of the race ; for the good it has been prompted to do ; for the part 
it had strength to play in the grandest drama of our generation ; 
and then, with our eyes lifted, and not dimmed by tears, we shall 
be able to say, out of a full heart, " Thou doest all things well. 
Blessed be Thy name ! Blessed be Thy name for the three-score 
overflowing years ; for the sunny sky she was permitted finally to 
see — the hated name made immortal — the periled life guarded by 
a nation's gratitude ; for the capstone put on with shoutings ; that 
she was privileged to enter the promised land and rest in the tri- 
umph, with the family circle unbroken — all she loved about her ! 
And blessed be Thy name, Father, that in duo time, with gracious 
and tender loving-kindness, Thou didst break the bonds that hin- 
dered her true life, and take her to higher service in thine imme- 
diate presence ! " 



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